So I was approached at work by a coworker who knows I play guitar and he asks if I'd be interested in a knock-off Gibson LP. He showed me a few different models and I was pretty impressed at the build quality and the playability. I ended up grabbing one for cheap. I took it home, replaced the strings, removed the pickguard, and cleaned it and then began to really play and assess the instrument. There were no sharp fret ends, it was, to my surprise, well intonated, the action was fine out of the box and the tuners held tune just fine. There were some imperfections - as was expected. There seems to be a bit of a weird spacing where the left side of the neck meets the pocket but it's only noticable to me because I have real LPs to compare to. Whatever flaws were found did not affect playability.

I plan to swap the bridge out for a Gotoh and I may possibly replace the pickups. I'm not sure about the latter. We'll see. The only reason I bought this was because the dice roll of ordering one sight unseen online was eliminated from the equation. I am not sure if I would ever order one of these from Ali Express or whatever. Well, actually, another reason I grabbed it was because it was cheap and it satisfied a curiosity. I intend to use this for a modding platform and to bring to rehearsals, jams, open mics, etc. There will be zero worries given should it scratch or whatever. It plays really well so it'll be perfect in that regard.

Here's a picture of the instrument.



Here's a short clip of it in action.




It's hard to recommend these unless you're willing to roll the dice and know that some flaws will exist and some parts may need to be replaced. My thought process is for what they charge for these, if you spend just a bit more you can find a great playing used instrument. So take it with a grain of salt. I'll beat the shit out of mine.